No Gift to Bring
by selori
Summary: Stark Tower, Midtown Manhattan landmark, was decorated professionally. There were external decorations over the lower floors and on the various rooftops. When it came time to decorate the Avengers' living areas, Tony assumed they would take the path of least resistance and most style, and use the same decorators for their floors. He reckoned without the Avengers.
1. Chapter 1

Coulson looked up as Tony entered the common room and shoved Barton's shoulder with his own before he stood up and walked to the kitchen, buttoning his jacket.

"Hey, Stark?" Barton called from where he was sitting beside Steve on the couch. "What would you think of some Christmas decorations around the Tower?" Bruce looked up from the armchair where he was reading, placing a forefinger on the page to mark his place.

Tony directed a quizzical look at him. "Uh, sure? I mean, Sta—uh, Avengers Tower, now— will get decorated just like the rest of our buildings do every year. Pepper's in charge of it," he said, squeezing her hand, and he smiled at her affectionately. "Should be easy enough to get them to come up here and do our floors, right, Pepper?"

As Pepper opened her mouth to respond, Steve stood up and preempted her. "Tony, we can't do that," he protested. "No offense, Pepper," he said, tipping his head deferentially to her. Barton stood, too, and supported Steve with a solid nod and his arms folded firmly across his chest.

"Uh, what? Have people in our quarters?" Tony asked. "They'll be vetted. Full background checks, approved by SHIELD. And Pepper," he added for emphasis. "That's the hard-to-get approval."

"No, we can't have someone else do our Christmas decorating," Steve replied. "Decorating for the holidays is..." He trailed off, searching for the right word.

"It's personal," Barton assisted. "It's your own taste and your own choices, for good or bad."

"It's something families should do together," Steve added, and Tony could almost see the flag and smell the apple pie aroma drifting in a breeze from him.

"That's what the TV shows all say, anyway." Barton shrugged noncommittally. "I wouldn't know."

"Yeah, well, me either," Tony muttered, "I was never classy enough for Stark family home decorating."

A yelp and thump from the kitchen broke the uncomfortable pause that followed. "JARVIS, how can we possibly be out of coffee?" Coulson growled. "STARK!"

"What?" Tony's eyes rounded. He held his hands up to the others in a temporizing gesture. "Coffee emergency!" he exclaimed, forestalling further discussion. "Must fix!"

He dashed into the kitchen, only to hear Coulson thanking JARVIS for allowing Coulson to use him in his deception.

"Are you kidding me? When did this become my life, that an undead super-secret spy is colluding with my AI to give me incipient coffee-deprivation induced heart failure?" Tony muttered cuttingly.

"I needed to get you—and only you—in here with me. I'm not above looking a little foolish to protect my agents. Now." Coulson paused pointedly and fixed Tony with an intent stare. His ordinarily-mild blue gaze was now more like one of Barton's arrows pinning Tony to the wall. "Christmas decorating," he said.

"Ooookay," Tony said, raising his brows.

"None of the Avengers have exactly had a stellar home life," Coulson went on.

"Sure, even I know that much," Tony agreed.

"You have never seen Barton's quarters at Christmas," Coulson said with an emphatic forefinger to Tony's chest for emphasis. "Or Romanov's." At Stark's quizzical look, Coulson continued. "You're familiar with Charlie Brown's Christmas tree?" Tony nodded, clearly not seeing the connection. "Barton's tree dreamed of growing up to be that elegant and dignified."

"Ouch," Tony winced. "So, you're saying that under no circumstances should we allow either of them to decorate," Tony confirmed.

"No," Coulson contradicted him sharply. "I'm saying that under no circumstances should you prevent either of them—any of them—from decorating."

"You know," Tony said thoughtfully, "you have that look about you that says that you believe the words you're using are making logical sense."

"Stark." Coulson reined Tony in with just the single, sharp word. "This is the closest thing any of them have had to a real home in years, perhaps ever. Think," Coulson exhorted him firmly, pushing him back toward the common room. "Just... Think."

"That man," Tony grumbled as he stalked back into the common room, shaking his head. "If we're out of Folgers, Coulson" he continued, voice rising, "just drink the shade-grown, free-trade, bird-friendly, organic, single-farm Sumatra. Like. Everyone. Else!" He finished his rant by yelling the last words over his shoulder toward the kitchen.

"So," he began brightly, rubbing his hands together and turning to the others, "where were we?"

"Decorating our own living quarters," Steve said firmly.

"Sure, whatever," Tony agreed airily. "We can do that. How hard can it be?"

"Well, that all depends, Tony," Pepper put in. "Do the Avengers know that they're dealing with a man who has no idea what Christmas decorations should look like?"

"Pepper, you wound me with your words," he returned, throwing a hand over his chest and directing wide puppy-dog eyes at her.

"That's right, Tony," she said, blue eyes sparkling with laughter. "Two words in particular: Christmas. Bunny."

"Fine. JARVIS, order us up ten or twenty sets of lights and a bunch of ornaments, whatever the cool decorators are using this year..."

"What?" Steve exclaimed.

"No!" Barton objected.

"Tony, you don't do it like that. You don't just..." Steve waved his hands about helplessly. "Throw money at an idea and—"

"Excuse me, have we met?" Tony asked, walking toward Steve and extending his hand for a shake. "Tony Stark,billionaire, and, yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I do. It's my day job. And my side jobs. And my hobbies, too."

"Surely there are plenty of left-overs from previous years' decorating plans?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Tony responded, "no idea, and don't—"

"—call me Shirley!" Barton and Bruce chorused with him.

"Boys," Pepper chided fondly.

"What have they done now?" Natasha asked as she entered the room.

"Eighties movies," Tony replied. "Like much of the 80s, it's catching. Often incurable. You should run," he grinned.

"They're planning to decorate the Avengers' floors for Christmas," Pepper explained.

"Nice," Natasha said placidly. "All of us together?"

"Sure, if we can find the stuff. What do you say, Pepper?" Tony asked. "Think the decorators will have left a few bits and bobs in storage in years past?"

"I'll find out," she promised, pulling out her phone. With Pepper managing hiring and oversight, every year the decorating designs and themes for the public Stark buildings had been exemplars of style and good taste. Whatever she was able to dig out of the leftovers would surely be better than anything Tony could order.

Tony turned to Steve and Barton, the main instigators. "May I order a new tree, or does that have to be vintage as well?"


	2. Chapter 2

The tree was scheduled to be delivered in two days. That left the Avengers, collectively, with enough time to sort through the virtual mountain of ornaments, tinsel, lights, garland, and ribbons that had been left behind by previous years' decorating efforts. Steve had approved the purchase of new hangers for the ornaments that had lost theirs (or replacing them with paperclips or string).

There was enough variety to satisfy everyone—traditional wooden ornaments, glass ones, fabric ones, beaded ones, red ones, blue-and-silver ones, clear ones, red-and-gold ones (Tony might have swiped those early on). Coulson had leaned over to murmur something in Barton's ear at the start of the process, and now Barton had accumulated a suspiciously red-white-and-blue pile of ornaments. It was perhaps a Christmas miracle that no one came to blows over which decorations would be used in the common rooms.

The one constant, the one point of agreement, was that everyone insisted that there should be lights on the tree and around the rooms.

The problem was that the old lights didn't work.

Tony had dragged out the old strings of lights, and they were a mess. Lights out, lights missing, cords frayed, tangled in knots. As the other Avengers sorted through decorations, he plugged each lump of lights in for testing. More than half of them didn't light at all. Some of them did, here and there. Half a string might light, then its other half would flicker, then the whole thing might go dead.

"This is ridiculous, and a total waste of time," he muttered. "JARVIS, order us up about twenty of these and have them delivered." He turned to dispose of the old lights and caught Steve's horrified look.

"You can't just throw those away!" he protested.

"Uh, can and will," Tony responded, opening the trash bin.

"No!" Steve grabbed the lights. "You can't just get rid of things when they take a bit of effort. We can make them work."

"Oh, no," Tony moaned, clutching at the lights and attempting to pull them back from Steve. "Is this some sort of cultural moment? It's one of those frugality things, isn't it? 'Use it up, wear it out'? It isn't worth it, Cap."

He pulled, but Steve refused to release the lights, and now they were drawing the others' attention. "Steve, seriously, they don't make things the way you're used to. There's this whole 'planned obsolescence' thing going on. These were never made to last, maybe not even made to be reused."

"Are you telling me you can't make them work, Tony?" Steve challenged.

And there it was. The moment where the 46-plus hour timeline converted in Tony's mind to the huge digital countdown clock on the wall of a missile silo. He could practically see each red LED changing over. 46:37:23... 46:37:22... 46:37:21

"I cannot even start to list the possible points of failure, here. In order to even test a single string, each socket must be filled with a working bulb. Which means each bulb must be tested separately. The sockets themselves can go bad. Then there's the fuse—easy enough to test, but the cord itself..." He shook his head. "JARVIS would cry if he saw the weak-sauce wiring they use on these things. There could be a break anywhere, and who's to say there's only one?"

Tony pulled out the big guns. "You could be breaking them right now just from your grip," he said, and Steve, sucker to the end, released the lights like they were burning him.

Tony took a deep breath. "Now if we could get all those ducks in a row, and make a strand work, it still has to be unknotted without damaging any bulbs, sockets, wiring, or sheathing. Honest, Captain Planet. Not. Worth. It."

He turned back to the trash bin and ran directly into Coulson's disapproving eyebrow. Which is how the Avengers ended up spending a "team bonding" evening trying to unknot strands of Christmas lights in the confident belief that Tony Stark would figure out a way to make the lights work.

Tony watched Steve try to detangle several of the strands. He had the patience, but even his dexterous artist's hands were not precise enough for the work. Additionally, working with the light strands was a process that seemed to take at least four hands at any given time: two to support the knotted cords so they didn't re-tighten, one to trace the path, and at least one more to feed the cord back through the knots. When Steve called Pepper in for an assist, it became clear that even four weren't enough and that a fifth or sixth hand would have been a definite plus.

After watching the assassin twins work on their strand together, with the occasional assistance of their former handler, Tony concluded that a shared brain might be advantageous, too. Really, this was not the sort of activity that was suited for humans. It would be much better to have someone with arms that didn't get tired, who had enough hands or fingers to complete the job, and who didn't interrupt the process with inconveniently timed bathroom breaks.

Tony mused on this the next day as he tested the various strings of lights in his lab. The others had promised that if (when!) he got the strings working, they would get them linear. All bets were off in the event of Doombot attack, of course.

This meant Tony somehow needed to get access to each of the lights in the strand, which meant more than a little time pulling his hair in frustration. Despite nearly thirty hours awake and a throat dried by too much coffee, he was still able to work himself into an extremely vocal tirade.

"It's a conspiracy, JARVIS. Planned obsolescence. Everyone says that no matter how well they're put away the year before, they always manage to get tangled almost beyond salvaging. And what's the source of this? Gremlins? Focused entropy? Spontaneous chaos generation? Hm? It's impossible. No engineer worth their slide rule would design something like that. Therefore there must be darker forces at work."

"I see, sir. When you explain it in those terms, it does make perfect sense." JARVIS paused momentarily. "A reminder, sir, that you have thirty minutes until the board meeting. Would sir prefer to use his tin foil hat to accessorize the grey or the blue suit this afternoon?"

While he ignored the board members in the meeting, Tony directed more thought to the debacle that was the Christmas lights in the tower. Really, even if he got them all working, there was no guarantee that the rest of the team would be able to straighten them out, and almost certainly not by deadline. It called for a more elegant solution; certainly a less organic one.

It would require... Something like Dummy, but with more arms and a lot more finesse. He would need a chassis. Not too mobile, because you wouldn't want it to roll all over the lights. No, movement would have to be very deliberate. And multiple optical sensors, because the bot would need to see the entire problem, all sides of it at once. And then hands... or maybe highly-articulated appendages instead?

The board meeting closed without his conscious notice, and he wandered back to the workshop, half-lost in thought. "Okay, JARVIS, " he announced as he strode through the door, "here's what we're going to need..."

A mere ten hours later, Tony fed the first mound of lights to his newly-minted light-detangling bot. A moment later the bot's appendage lost its grip on the cord and slid about four feet, crushing each bulb in its path. As he shook the multicolored glass shards out of his hair, Tony took a moment to be thankful that he had, for once, given in to JARVIS' nagging and worn his lab glasses.

"Okay, so good thing we used one of the ones with dead wiring, then, right JARVIS?"

After a few more tries, he produced a bot that could pull on the decorative strings lightly enough to unwind them from each other and not break the wiring within the strands.

He didn't hear Pepper keying in her code to the lab. He did, however, hear the immediate volume drop of Godsmack. "Pepper, my light! What brings you to the lab this afternoon?"

"It's morning, Tony," she responded in amused resignation. "You've been all-night engineering again."

"Really?" How had the Countdown Clock Of Doom gotten away from him? Yep, there it was. He could see the little red LEDs ticking over: 04:52:14... 04:51:13... "Pepper, how could you? You dare to call just after six A.M. morning? And with a straight face, too!"

"Tony." She leaned over to give him a kiss and paused, trying to find a grease-free spot. She settled on a point just in front of his ear and gave him a quick buss. "We missed you last night."

"Yeah, well, engineering to do..." he mumbled vaguely.

"What are you up to, anyway?" she asked.

"Ligh—" he broke off in a yawn. "Light-detangling bot. Save thousands of person-hours untangling light strings each year."

"Seriously?" She laughed. "Tony, how many of those strings of lights have you broken in testing?"

"Um, several? But they were perfect for testing! They were more tangled up than Cap's conscience."

"You may have chosen the wrong man for your metaphor, Tony. I'd imagine Steve's conscience is smooth as a pane of glass," Pepper said smilingly. "How many hours have you spent on this? No, don't answer that." She shook her head. "Have you ever heard of 'throwing good money after bad'?" She paused, reassessed, and then tried again. "Okay, do you have any idea what that phrase means to normal people?"

"Sir has indeed heard the phrase, Ms. Potts," JARVIS inserted, "but I fear that Mr. Stark still believes that budgets are things that happen to other people."

"Tony," she said firmly, "get a few hours' sleep, and then come upstairs for lunch and decorating. Bring the lights." She searched for another clean spot for a kiss. "Shower," she amended her instruction. "Then sleep."

"Sure," he agreed absently. "Almost done here." He bent to examine the bot's fine motor controls again and missed Pepper's fond headshake as she left.

An hour later, JARVIS interrupted him. "Sir, may I remind you that Ms. Potts requested your attendance at an Avengers gathering?"

"Just this last one, here, JARVIS, I think I've almost got it..." The bot took the snarl of light cords and began gently pushing the strands around, feeding them back through knots and pulling ends delicately through gaps it created. "Yes! Ha! And they said it couldn't be done!"

"You neglected to add 'Mwah-hah-hah', but I take your point, sir," JARVIS intoned. "It is an excellent device."

Lights dimmed at the work table and the projection screens, and Dummy and You scurried back to their charging stations. Tony sighed. "Cutting me off, JARVIS?" The only illumination that remained was the brightly-lit hallway leading to the attached bathroom. "Fine, fine, I'll go," he said, ending his words in a yawn. He patted the new bot gently. "Good boy. Stay."


	3. Chapter 3

Tony managed not to drown himself in the shower or suffocate himself with the blankets after he stumbled to the cot in the workshop, two facts that he considered strong wins.

Not a win? Sleeping through "lunch and decorating." Pepper was going to kill him. Tony gathered up the functional lights—wait, how was there only one strand? Seriously? Had the bot destroyed all the others during testing? Well, yes, technically Tony had been feeding them one by one to the bot, but that was how science got done, right? Except Pepper was going to kill him. No, Coulson was going to kill him, and Pepper was going to dance on his grave in stylish, 4-inch stilettos.

He dithered for a few minutes, trying to decide whether it would be worse to stay in the workshop and pretend he hadn't woken up or to crawl upstairs with the lone strand of lights as his meager offering. Just as he'd almost decided to fly to Malibu for the evening, he heard someone enter the access code to the lab.

"Tony? Are you up yet?" Steve's voice was... carrying, but not angry. Why was it not angry?

"Uh, I'm up?" Tony answered. He ran a hand over his moustache and goatee, checking for lingering drool crust. Nope, no crust; he was good to go.

"Good. Dinner's almost ready, the decorations are laid out, and we've almost got the tree up," Steve informed him cheerfully. "All we need now is you."

"Oo-kaay." Tony reluctantly bundled the last, lone string of lights up in his arms and prepared to go upstairs to meet his doom. "I thought we were doing lunch?"

Steve grinned brightly. "Pepper told us you were inventing, and we decided that you'd need the sleep after."

"Wow, that's really..." The verbal centers in his brain ground to a halt. Kind? Rational? Enabling? He gratefully let the sentence die as he was overtaken by a yawn. Steve didn't seem to notice, but instead drew him into the elevator.

The elevator doors opened to let them into the common level, and the spiky scent of fresh fir washed over them. Someone had Christmas music playing in the background, and the song was familiar enough that it was comforting even as Tony tuned it out. Steve headed straight for the kitchen. As Tony crossed the threshold, Pepper pressed a warm mug into his hand and linked her elbow through his, drawing him further into the room. He automatically drank from his mug made a face at the thick sweetness.

"What's this?"

"It's NotCoffee. I know," Pepper laughed at his offended expression, "but everyone's been drinking hot chocolate, so I made one for you, too."

"It's also NotScotch," he grumbled, but he took another sip anyway. As NotCoffee went, it was surprisingly good.

"So..." He looked around the living room. Really, everyone had done a great job. There were swags of evergreen garland, be-ribboned candles here and there, and an enormous Christmas tree near the windows, surrounded by boxes and piles of ornaments. Thor's long arm was thrust between the tree's branches, holding the trunk vertical, while Clint explained something that required a lot of arm gestures and squinting. Tony indicated the tree and its attendant Avengers. "What's happening there?"

"Oh, we're having a bit of trouble keeping it vertical," Pepper said blithely.

"Is Thor going to stay there all winter?" Tony joked.

"No, they're waiting for— Here he is." Pepper nodded at Coulson as he arrived and handed Barton several arrows.

"What is he—" Tony's jaw dropped as he watched Barton clarmber up the Asgardian until he was standing with one foot on his shoulder and another braced lightly against the tree. "Barton! You monkey! Stop climbing Thor!"

Barton genially flipped him off before taking the arrows out of his mouth and doing something complicated-looking with them right below the top tier of branches. "Better than any ladder, Stark!" he called back. He gripped an arrow and tossed it, dartlike, into a corner of ceiling and wall where it hit with what Tony considered a disproportionately loudthunk. Barton turned slightly and repeated the action twice more before he straightened and backflipped off of Thor's shoulders. Coulson nodded approvingly to the archer.

Barely-visible line now stretched from the top of the tree to three walls of the room. "Did you just anchor the Christmas tree to the ceiling?" Tony demanded.

"Yep," Barton answered with a grin. "Okay, Thor, go ahead and let go."

Thor released the tree and stepped away. After the branches swished back into position, the tree remained ruler-straight. "Excellently done, my friend," he commended, clapping Barton on the shoulder.

Barton gave a negligent shrug but seemed to appreciate the praise nonetheless. "We're ready for lights, then!" he proclaimed.

Suddenly Tony's discomfort came rushing back. "So, about that..." He held out the lone strand of lights that had survived the creation of the new robot.

Coulson shook his head at Tony, and gave Barton a gentle push toward the kitchen. "Back to work, you," he said, walking with him.

"Thank you, Tony," Pepper said, taking the lights from him with a kiss. I know exactly where those should go." She disengaged her arm from his and crossed to the dining table. The center was laid with fir branches interspersed ribbon. Pepper expertly wove the lights under and through the branches and ribbon until the cord was almost entirely hidden.

"Thor, if you would?" she invited.

"It would be my pleasure, Lady Pepper," Thor intoned, stepping forward. He reached toward the table, and a sharp snap of electricity leaped from his fingertip to the lights which began to glow.

"And you think that will last?" she confirmed.

"Aye, my presence should ensure the persistence of the charge," Thor replied, smiling.

As if the lighting of the table had been a cue, the other Avengers began filing out of the kitchen with plates, utensils, and serving platters in their hands. The now-faint fragrance of his hot chocolate was overwhelmed with the aromas coming from the dishes, pungent spices blending with the resiny scent of the fir boughs and stinging his eyes. It seemed that Christmas time had actually arrived in Avengers Tower, and Tony had been too distracted in his workshop to notice.

Conversation centered mostly on how they would arrange everything to fit on the table and some light-hearted banter. The music changed from a traditional carol to something in a minor key but with a distinct drum line. As the singer claimed she had no gift to give the baby King, Tony grimaced. The trite song was not one of his favorites. Tony thought about the lights he had spent the past two days (unsuccessfully) fixing. No one had mentioned the rest of the lights, or the lack of them, but he still felt his failure sharply. This singer offered to play a drum for the baby Jesus, and Tony scoffed until he heard the choir add a soaring, almost eerie "All-Mighty, All Holy One."

Oh.

Because, really? If there were an all-powerful maker of this universe and all others, what was a drum solo as an offering? Or, put the other way, what made any of the other gifts any more valuable to an almighty being than a heartfelt song from a little boy?

And if he was living with Earth's Mightiest Heroes, what was a dozen sets of Christmas lights—or even one lone remaining strand—to be giving them? Maybe... Maybe the point was mostly just to show up. And to want to be there.

His eyes might have gotten very round, because he saw Coulson nodding fractionally at him, the way a teacher might when a slow student finally grasped a concept. The song segued into a drum solo that even Tony had to admit was kickin'.

Everyone started seating themselves at the table. "Dinner smells amazing, guys," Tony said, "and you've done great things with the decorations. We'll finish after dinner?"

Pepper smiled at him. "We need to put the lights on the tree and then the rest of the ornaments, and then we're done with the common area."

"Um, about the lights," he began.

"Stark." Coulson cut him off. "When Pepper told us about your newest invention—congratulations, by the way—we took steps to," he paused delicately, "replace the inventory you were using for testing. The extra lights arrived this afternoon."

"So, we're good?" Tony confirmed.

"Yep," Clint answered. "And after dinner, we get to see if we can decorate the tree by arrow."

"I don't even want to—" Tony began.

"One word: Boomerangs."

Natasha smacked the back of Barton's head and said something no doubt cutting in Russian.

"I can too use the arrows indoors," he retorted. "Coulson even let me use the grappling arrows..."

"I knew that would come back to haunt me," Coulson griped. He mimed checking his watch. "Look, five whole minutes later. That might be a new record."

"Eat before it gets cold, everyone," Steve said. "There's more decorating to do."

Tony looked around the table and smiled at his friends. "I'm glad we're all here together," he said simply. Then, for the first time, he said, "Merry Christmas, everyone."


End file.
